Choosing baby gender, also called as sex selection is one facet that has attracted and garnered much interest and controversy over the years it was first announced as a possibility. Sex selection of babies has always been connected with a variety of moral, ethical, social, and legal issues. It is even considered as mind-boggling that people are not having the ability and confidence to control a baby’s gender when a century ago mothers are already considering themselves to be lucky just to survive the process of giving birth to their babies. Due to modern technology nowadays, a couple can already plan the number of boys and girls that they want to have in their family.
Despite of the controversies, however, gender selection of babies are sometimes performed due to medical reasons in order to avoid sex-linked diseases of possible children like Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy and hemophilia. On the other hand, in considering family balancing purposes, gender selection is seen as a very controversial issue. For people who agree of it they see it as fundamental rights of every couple while those who negate it see it as a great threat to the society. There are natural and artificial ways of choosing baby gender. For the natural techniques one way of selecting gender of babies is by scheduling the intercourse during a time which is close to the woman’s ovulation cycle. If a couple has intercourse during this time of the month, the probability of having baby girl is high. There are other natural techniques done in the natural way although some of them are considered as folkloric or myths only. One myth says that the depth of the penetration of the man matters because of the race of the sperms to the egg. Other stories even take hot baths, drinking coffee, and the altering of pH or body temperature as recommendations to have a boy or a girl. Natural techniques are doubted for their effectiveness, however, so couples who want confidence refer to the use of science for help.
One artificial way of selecting baby gender is by removing the eggs from the woman and fertilizing and culturing it in the laboratory through the use of in vitro method. After this the chromosomes of the fertilized embryo is analyzed whether it was a girl or a boy before it was implanted again the mother’s womb. This technique is highly controversial because it involves the discarding of the embryo if the gender result wasn’t the one that the parents want. Other artificial methods include the centrifuging or sorting out of weights of the make and female sperm, the microsort, spin, ericson methods, sperm selection, and embryo screening. There are centers offering techniques which can be done vie their clinics or even on the homes of the aspiring parents. At present, choosing baby gender is still a very controversial issue between those against it and those who approve of it because it involves the heavy influencing and tinkering of man to the once-natural process of creating new lives.